"Democracy is a very bad form of government. Unfortunately all the others are so much worse." Winston Churchill

"It is ridiculous claiming that video games influence children. For instance, if Pac-man affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music." Anonymous…

"When you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research" Wilson Mizner

"In the past you could go to a library and read, borrow or copy any book. Today you’d get arrested for mere telling someone where the library is." – Michael Niedermayer

"drug, n: A substance that, injected into a rat, produces a scientific paper."

"'That man is a success who lived well, laughed often and loved much: who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of children: who has filled his niche and accomplished his task: who leaves the world a better place than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul; who never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who looked for the best in others and gave the best he had.'" Robert Louis Stevenson.

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed. Those who are cold and are not clothed … " – US President Eisenhower

If Java had proper garbage collection, most programs would self-delete upon execution. – Jucius Maximus

"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock …" Ok I know the Cuckoo Clock is not from Switzerland but the quote is still very nice. It's from a movie but I can't remember the name.

"quit whining you haven't done anything wrong because frankly you haven't done much of anything" – an email signature

"Visual SourceSafe?? It would be safer to print out all your code, run it through a shredder, and set it on fire." – A guy working at Microsoft

A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing. —Alan Perlis

"Why, of course the people don't want war … but, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship … voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." -Herman Goering, Nuremberg 1946.

"Bunch together a group of people deliberately chosen for strong religious feelings, and you have a practical guarantee of dark morbidities expressed in crime, perversion, and insanity." -HP Lovecraft, letter to Robert E. Howard 10/4/30

Anarchist Unemployed Libertarian Libertarian Employed Anarchist

Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals. – obs@burnout.demon.co.uk

“Oh, they don’t miss me. I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this. Or talking about how strange the world is.” ~Clarisse McClellan?

"I don't think people consciously realize this, but one reason downwind jobs like churning out Java for a bank pay so well is precisely that they are downwind. The market price for that kind of work is higher because it gives you fewer options for the future. A job that lets you work on exciting new stuff will tend to pay less, because part of the compensation is in the form of the new skills you'll learn." – Paul Graham

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction." A. Einstein

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." Jack Valenti, “Home Recording of Copyrighted Works,” Committee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, April 12, 198

"Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? A: No. Q: Did you check for blood pressure? A: No. Q: Did you check for breathing? A: No. Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? A: No. Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor? A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar. Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless? A: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."

74. Zymurgy's Law of Volunteer Labor:
People are always available for work in the past tense.

75. A classic is something that everybody wants to have
read, and nobody wants to read.

76. NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier,
Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong.
GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then
everything he says will be right.

77. Good news: Ten weeks from Friday will be a pretty
good day.

78. Drive defensively. Buy a tank.

79. Conway's Law:
In any organisation there will always be one person
who knows what is going on.
This person must be fired.

a80. Just because your doctor has a name for your condi- tion doesn't mean he knows what it is.

b80. As your doctor has a name for your condition yet it doesn't mean he knows what it is.

81. Nothing is faster then the speed of light...
To prove this to yourself, try opening refrigerator
door before the light comes on.

82. Anything is good if it's made of chocolate.

83. "Wagner's music is better than it sounds."

84. Leibowitz's Rule:
When hammering a nail, you will never hit your finger
if you hold the hammer with both hands.

85. Weiner's Law of Libraries:
There are no answers, only cross references.

86. You can always talk to a Harward man, but you can't tell
him much.

87. Murphy's Statement on the Power of Negative
Thinking:
It is impossible for an optimist to be pleasantly sur-
prised.

88. Farndick's Corollary to the Fifth Corollary:
After things have gone from bad to worse, the cycle
will repeat itself.

89. A surprising property of a computer program. A bug
can be changed to a feature by documenting it.

90. Havig children is hereditary:
If your parents didn't have any, then you probably
won't either.

91. Cheops' Law:
Nothing EVER gets built on schedule or within budget.

92. A committee is a life form with six or more legs and
no brain.

93. The Law of Frisbee:
The most powerful force in the world is that of a disc
straining to land under a car, just out of reach (this
force is technically termed "car sucks").

94. Putt's Law:
Technology is dominated by two types of people:
1. Those who understand what they do not manage.
2. Those who manage what they do not understand.

95. Mr. Cole's Axiom:
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant;
yet the population is growing.

96. Show respect for age. Drink good scotch for a change.

97. How long a minute is depends upon which side of the
bathroom door you're on.

98. One reason why computers can do more work than
people is that they never have to stop and answer the
phone.

99. At source of every error which is blamed on the
computer, you will find at least two human errors, in-
cluding the error of blamming it on the computer.

100. Psychiatrist say that one out of for people are men- tally ill. Check three friends. If they're ok, you're it.

101. If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict atten- tion to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

102. People usually get what's coming to them … unless it's been mailed.

103. Oliver's Law: Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

104. Slick's First Law of the Universe: Nothing in the known universe travels faster than a bad check.

105. Slick's Second Law of the Universe: A quarter-ounce of chocolate = four pounds of fat.

106. You will be a winner today. Pick a fight a four- year-old.

107. REPORTER (to Mahatma Gandhi): Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western Civilisation? GANDHI: I think it would be a good idea.

108. The way to make a small fortune in the commodities market is to start with a large fortune.

109. How many hardware engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None: "We'll fix it in software."

110. Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.

111. You know it's going to be a bad day when… You wake up face down on the pavement.

112. You know it's going to be a bad day when… Your birthday cake collapses from the weight of the candle.

113. You know it's going to be a bad day when… Your car horn goes off accidentally and remains stuck as you follow a group of Hell's Angels on the freeway.

114. You know it's going to be a bad day when… You wake up and discover that your waterbed sprang a leak, and then you realize that you don't have a waterbad.

115. Originality is the art of concealing your source.

116. Amand's Law of Management: Everyone is always someplace else.

117. Paul's Second Law: The sooner you fall behind, the more time you will have to cath up.

118. If you have a difficult task, give it to someone lazy … that person will find an easier way to do it.

119. If there's artificial intelligence, there's bound to be some artificial stupidity.

120. Insanity is hereditary, - You get it from your children.

121. An honest politician is one who, when brought, stays bought.

122. You can tune a piano, but you can't tuna fish.

123. A closed mouth gathers no foot.

124. What's black and white and red all over? An embarassed zebra.

125. Organisation is enemy of improvisation.

126. He flung himself on his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

127. On a clear disk you can seek forever.

128. He who laughs last probably doesn't understand the joke.

129. This place is so weird that the cockroaches have moved next door.

130. !lanimret siht edisni deppart ma I !pleH

131. Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

132. To study a subject best, understand it thoroughly be- fore you start.

133. And so we plow along, as the fly said to the ox.

134. If a program is usefull, it will have to be changed.

135. If a program is useless, it will have to be documented.

136. A Smith and Wesson beats four aces.

137. You can lead a horse to water, but if you can get him to float on his back you've got something.

138. If you put your supper dish to yout ear you can hear the sounds of a restaurant. (Snoopy)

139. When in darkness or in doubt, Run in circles, scream and shout.

140. Always draw your curves first, then plot the readings.

141. Experiments should be reproducable - they should all fail in the same way.

142. When working toward the solution of a problem, it al- ways helps if you know the answer.

143. The value of a program is proportional to the weight of its output.

144. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

145. Never try to outstubborn a cat.

146. Anything free is worth what you pay for it.

147. Two wrongs do not make a right: it usually takes three or more.

148. Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.

149. He was so narrow-minded he could see through a key- hole with two eyes.

150. I like work; it fascinates me; I can sit and look at it for hours.

151. My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

152. No one can feel as helpless as the owner of a sick goldfish.

153. Now and than an innocent man is sent to the legisla- ture.

154. Often statistics are used as a drunken man uses lamp- posts for support rather than illumination.

155. That must be wonderful! I don't understand it at all.

156. The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.

157. Whenever I feel like exercise, I lie down until the feel- ing passes.

158. Basic research is what I am doing when - I don't know what I am doing.

Weiler's Law: Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.

Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it.

[John Carmack on Java]
Write-once-run-anywhere. Ha. Hahahahaha. We are only testing on four
platforms right now, and not a single pair has the exact same quirks. All
the commercial games are tweaked and compiled individually for each
(often 100+) platform. Portability is not a justification for the awful
performance.

"What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"
-- Bill Gates, An Open Letter to Hobbyists, 1976

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
-- George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists

"I would only do it if I could get some compensation for immaterial damage; yuck, working on Windows is so painful."
— Reyk Floeter,

Two students walk out of a toilet. One of them says to the other, “At Harvard we were taught to wash our hands after taking a leak.” The other retorts, “At the Moscow University they taught us not to piss on our hands.”
Anekdot.ru

additional quotes for CS and programming

We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil - C. A. R. Hoare

Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen - Edward V Berard

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. - Hofstadter’s Law

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have two problems - Jamie Zawinski

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. - Brian Kernighan

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight. - Bill Gates

PHP is a minor evil perpetrated and created by incompetent amateurs, whereas Perl is a great and insidious evil, perpetrated by skilled but perverted professionals. - Jon Ribbens

On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’ I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.” - Charles Babbage

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. - Rick Osborne

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. - Rich Cook

I don’t care if it works on your machine! We are not shipping your machine! - Ovidiu Platon

I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone. - Bjarne Stroustrup

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention in human history, with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. - Mitch Ratcliffe

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. - E. W. Dijkstra

It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC. As potential programmers, they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. - E. W. Dijkstra

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they’re not. - Yoggi Berra

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. - Albert Einstein

Perl – The only language that looks the same before and after RSA encryption. - Keith Bostic

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by. - Douglas Adams

Saying that Java is good because it works on all platforms is like saying anal sex is good because it works on all genders - Unknown

XML is like violence – if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it. - Unknown

Einstein argued that there must be simplified explanations of nature, because God is not capricious or arbitrary. No such faith comforts the software engineer. - Fred Brooks

“Using Java as a front-end for your security product, is like putting a pedophile in charge of a day-care center.” - Anonymous

“Java is a DSL for converting large XML files into Stack Traces” - Anonymous

"If they who represent us are unwilling to disclose what they said on our behalf the only thing certain is that they no longer represent us." - From Twitter about WikiLeaks?…

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” - Unknown